My first telecaster (norbertocaster)

norbertocaster (build 1)

Started: July 15, 2025 • Ended: in progress

I wanted to build a guitar for a few reasons. First of all, I just love playing instruments — especially guitars. I also have this fascination with woodworking. I can spend hours watching people on YouTube shape, sand, and assemble projects out of raw wood. It always looked so satisfying, and I wanted to try it myself.

But there was another push. The quality of guitars on the market today, especially for the price, is often disappointing. I even ordered two PRS guitars, expecting something great, and both turned out to be underwhelming in quality. At that point, I figured: why not build one myself?

As my friend jokingly put it:

He was pissed off by PRS guitar quality — so he decided to build his own.

And that’s exactly how this project started: part passion, part curiosity, and part frustration.

Welcome to my first guitar build as a total beginner. This is more of a diary than a guide — I’m sharing what I tried, what failed, and the little victories along the way.

The wood

From the very beginning, I knew I wanted to build a Telecaster-style guitar. The reason was simple: it’s one of the easiest and least complicated shapes. For a first build, I wanted something that would let me focus on learning the process, making mistakes, and figuring things out step by step.

I already had some experience with this kind of guitar, since I owned a Harley Benton TE-52. I had even modified it with upgraded electronics and hardware, so I was a little familiar with how Telecasters are put together. It felt like the perfect starting point.

The biggest challenge at first, though, was finding the right wood. I had no idea where to get proper guitar-making wood. Luckily, a colleague from my previous job turned out to be surprisingly well-connected in the Polish luthier scene. He shared some contacts, and just a few days later, I had raw wood in my hands — ready to be transformed into a guitar.

The wood I’m using for this build:

• alder for the body — as you can see in the photo, there are already two pieces glued together, so I saved a lot of time on this step (thanks to the seller who did it for me).
• rosewood for the fretboard.
• curly maple for the neck.

Every piece of wood has already been cut to its desired height.

This was the first moment when I realized a few important things:

• The guy who sold me the wood offered to cut the fret slots for a very small fee. I’m really glad I said “ok”, because doing it myself without proper tools could have easily ended in frustration — or worse, a broken fretboard. My advice: if you have the chance, let someone more experienced handle this part.
• Looking back, I would also ask to have the rough shape of the guitar body and neck cut as well, if that option was available. At the time, I wanted to do it myself later — but in hindsight, starting with those cuts done might have saved me a lot of work.

The tools

Obviously, when you plan to do some woodworking, you need some tools, right? The problem was — I basically started with zero. Apart from a hand drill and a hammer (which aren’t exactly woodworking tools), I had nothing.

So I did what everyone does — went down the YouTube rabbit hole. I started watching videos on what you actually need to build a guitar, and this one in particular saved me a lot of time: How To Build Your First Guitar: the ULTIMATE GUIDE FOR NON WOODWORKERS.

At first, I decided to go all in with just hand tools (silly me). My plan was to buy them one by one, only when needed, and learn what could be done better along the way. The first two tools I bought were a japanese saw and a shinto rasp — both essential for shaping the body and the neck.

Body shaping

Once I had my first two tools — the japanese saw and the shinto rasp — it was finally time to start working on the body. Thankfully, I have a printer at home that can handle A3 format, which turned out to be really handy.

I found a Telecaster template on Electric Herald, printed it out, glued it directly onto the wood, and got to work.

The first step was cutting off the excess wood around the outline with the Japanese saw. It felt a bit like cutting a giant puzzle piece — rough at first, but slowly taking shape. After that, the shinto rasp came into play, helping me smooth out the edges and bring the body closer to its final curves.

As you can see in one of the photos, some parts of the body can also be removed using a hand drill with spade bits. That helps speed things up before switching to rasps or sandpaper.

Once the body was more or less shaped, I started sanding the edges with regular sandpaper. That was the first time I thought: “This is not going to happen (at least not quickly), and my arms are going to fall off.” So I decided to buy an orbital sander — and honestly, it was one of the best decisions in this whole project. Suddenly, sanding (and even removing some extra material) became much easier, faster, and more precise.

You can’t touch this piece of sanded wood, but trust me — it feels like glass. Awesome.

Control cavities

The next step after shaping the body was to make the cavities for the electronics, pickups, and so on. I started with forstner bits to drill out the initial holes, but then I had to remove the rest of the wood inside. And here came another problem — I didn’t have the right tools for that.

So, I had to order another essential tool: chisels (a 6 mm one, which later turned out to be perfect for the truss rod channel since it has the same width, and a 15 mm one).

If I can give you one piece of advice about tools: don’t buy the cheapest ones. You’ll quickly realize that cheap tools are actually expensive, because they break fast and don’t do the job as well as slightly better ones.

After my chisels finally arrived, I got to work cleaning out the cavities — and here’s the result!

At this point, the work on the body was done (we’ll get back to it later). I also forgot to mention some other handy tools I was using, like clamps, a half-round rasp, a ruler, and so on.

As the number of tools started to grow, I needed somewhere to keep them all. So I bought a simple wooden crate from IKEA, grabbed an unused piece of material, nailed it to the crate — and just like that, I had my half-hand-made toolbox!

Shaping the neck

The next step after finishing the body was to start working on the neck. Just like with the body, I printed out the template and glued it onto the piece of wood. The process is quite similar — you simply remove the excess wood to get the rough shape.

Shaping the fretboard

Once the rough shape of the neck was done, I moved on to the fretboard. Normally, at this stage it would make sense to cut the channel for the truss rod... but there was a small problem: I didn’t have one. And I couldn’t find one anywhere. Luckily, my well-connected colleague came to the rescue again, passed me some contacts, and eventually the truss rod arrived — almost a month later. So in the meantime, I focused on other parts.

Shaping the fretboard is kind of like working on the body and neck... but also not really. This was the moment I realized it was time to order another essential woodworking tool: a small plane. Sure, you can try to remove excess wood from a fretboard in other ways, but nothing beats the feeling of slicing off those perfect, chocolate-like curls of wood!

Making truss rod channel

Before cutting the actual truss rod channel, I decided to work on the neck profile. Honestly, I’m not even going to try describing the whole process here — it’s a bit complicated. Instead, just check out this YouTube video, and you’ll see exactly what I did step by step: creating neck profile.

Once my truss rod finally arrived, I could move on to making the channel. The idea here is pretty straightforward: use a 6 mm chisel to cut a channel right along the center line of the neck, with the length matching your truss rod (460 mm in my case). I decided to place the adjustment at the body side rather than the headstock.

Oh, I forgot about something!

As you probably know, woodworking creates a lot of mess — especially when it comes to sanding. Luckily, I’ve got a small garden with our ground-floor flat, so I picked up a foldable workbench to do the messy work outside and keep the dust outside.

Gluing the neck and fretboard

Once the truss rod channel was done, it was finally time to glue the fretboard and neck together. For this job I used Titebond D2 (the red one) — a very popular choice in woodworking. To be honest, this was the first moment when things actually started to look like a real guitar.

One important detail: don’t let any glue seep into the truss rod channel. The easiest way to prevent that is by covering it with thin masking tape before gluing. Then, spread the glue evenly across the surface, place the fretboard carefully, and make sure it sits straight.

Since I didn’t have enough clamps to apply proper pressure, I used a trick from the video I mentioned earlier — wrapping everything tightly with elastic exercise bands. And guess what? It worked like a charm! I left it for 24 hours just to be safe, and the result was amazing — the neck and fretboard looked like a single piece of wood.

Shaping the neck... again

Since I didn’t follow the template exactly, the fretboard ended up slightly wider than the neck in a few spots. So I had to grab my tools again and carefully remove the excess wood to match it perfectly with the neck.

But just look at this gallery — it came out fantastic! This was the first moment I got really excited, starting to feel like the end of the project was within reach.

Cutting the nut and fretting the fretboard

Here comes the part I really hate now: cutting the slot for the nut. I made plenty of mistakes here, including taking off too much wood (thankfully on the headstock side, so I’ll be able to fix it later somehow). The task itself is simple — cut a slot that matches the size of your nut — but in practice it was super frustrating. I was so annoyed I didn’t even take photos of the process.

After that, I finally got to switch from woodwork to something different: fretting the fretboard! There are a few ways to do this. If you’ve got a hand press, that’s probably the most sensible choice (in hindsight). Another option is to use a rubber hammer. I didn’t have a press, so the hammer it was.

For trimming the excess fret wire, you can buy dedicated tools… but honestly, a cheap nail cutter works just fine. I also added a tiny bit of wood glue in each slot to make sure the frets stayed in place.

Using a dedicated tool to rasp the side edges of the frets, I trimmed them to match the fretboard width. Then I decided to go ahead and finish the frets — big mistake! I grabbed a metal rasp to smooth the sides and ended up chipping the fretboard in a few spots (some of which I’ll have to fix later). Looking back, it was a really bad call — I should have waited until the neck was attached to the body and the fretboard was properly secured. Definitely one of the lessons learned.

Short story about Norbertocaster

At the beginning of this post, I mentioned that I wanted to build a Telecaster‑style guitar because it’s one of the easiest and least complicated guitar shapes. I wanted to keep this project as close to a Telecaster as possible.

At some point, I realized I wanted to make the shape more comfortable than a regular Telecaster by adding an arm cut and a belly cut (and maybe a few others) to the body. That’s when I decided to call the project the Norbertocaster.

End of story.

Arm cut and belly cut

Honestly, I didn’t use any online template for the cuts. I just drew the cut lines with a pencil and used a shinto rasp and an orbital sander to shape them. The results turned out great!

Connecting the body and the neck

This is probably the most crucial part of the whole build. Everything must be aligned perfectly if you want a playable instrument. There are, of course, a number of ways to do this - using dedicated, often expensive tools, clamps, rulers, and so on. I decided to go my own way and use what I already had - a self-leveling laser level. I placed it on the guitar body to project a laser along the center line, and then aligned the center line of the fretboard with it.

It’s also important to maintain the correct guitar scale. The distance from the nut to the 12th fret and from the 12th fret to the bridge saddles must be exactly the same. At this point, I realized I probably should have waited to make the cavities until now, but fortunately, the neck size was perfect and everything matched.

Once the neck is in the right position, clamp it to the body and use a pencil to mark its placement. Then, use your tools to create the neck pocket. I started with forstner bits to remove the bulk of the wood, then refined the pocket with chisels for precision. Once it was done, I was able to fit the neck into the pocket.

Check out this photo - it finally starts to look like the instrument it’s supposed to be! Of course, at this stage, it’s not fully connected yet.

This is the part where you really need some extra hands. Big thanks to my fiancée (and maybe my wife if you’re reading this from the second half of 2026 or later) for helping me out with this ❤️

The crazy weekend 6–7.09.2025

Oh man, what a weekend that was. We spent countless hours together trying to push the guitar project forward as much as possible in just two days. After attaching the neck to the body, it was finally time to place the pickguard, bridge, and other plates on the body, mark the spots, and start drilling the holes.

The biggest challenge here was drilling perfectly straight holes through the body. I don’t think it’s really possible to do this by hand alone — a drill press would have been a huge help. Since I didn’t have one, the holes weren’t perfect. But that’s okay — this whole project has been a lesson in patience and a great exercise in letting go of perfectionism. In the end, the goal is to make something useful and functional — not perfect down to every millimeter.

...and the story isn’t over yet.

The build isn’t finished yet, but it’s already been a huge learning journey.

Lessons learned (so far)

Building my first guitar wasn’t just about wood, tools, and strings — it was also about patience, problem-solving, and a lot of trial and error. Along the way I discovered some truths that every beginner luthier probably stumbles upon. Here are the biggest takeaways from my journey so far:

• building the first guitar was a great exercise in patience and letting go of perfectionism — always remember: done is better than perfect,
• your first guitar will definitely have flaws, but that’s part of the process — you’ll also gain a ton of insight into what to improve next time,
• don’t rely on power tools for precise work — they can easily get out of control and cause frustration, mistakes, or ugly flaws,
• every guitar maker develops their own workflow, tools, and tricks. Don’t get lost trying to follow every YouTube tutorial — otherwise, you’ll just end up with three different tools for the same job. Find your own rhythm and way of building,
• making your first guitar is also a terrible logistical challenge (at least it was for me) — I started with nothing but the will to build one, and had to figure out how to buy every single tool and guitar part without overspending. That meant hunting across multiple shops and sources just to keep the overall cost reasonable and avoid overpriced stuff,
• once you start a step, finish it. Don’t even begin if you know you can’t complete it (because of missing parts or other blockers) — leaving it half-done only leads to frustration and stress,
• it’s super helpful to have a guitar at home to compare against — that way you can check measurements and make sure you’re heading in the right direction,
• I'd do myself a favor and buy guitar templates made with MDF - it must be much easier to use than just the paper,

Breakdown of total cost

I’d like to share the total cost of the guitar build. I’m not including tools that can be reused for future projects. You can check the tool costs on the tools subpage.

Of course, I’m also using materials like glue (Titebond D2 – the red one) and sandpaper, but in terms of the total build cost, they’re almost negligible.